


becomes a curse

by reflectionslie (fallsink)



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Curses, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 22:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15917313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallsink/pseuds/reflectionslie
Summary: Once upon a time, there was once a prince who lived among the gods in heaven. One day, he accidentally broke a glass treasure and angered the jade emperor. He was then exiled to earth to live a cursed life. His curse: everything he comes to treasure, every person he comes to love would eventually be taken from him...(au where Kihyun has a condition that only Changkyun can heal, but neither of them know)





	becomes a curse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acrazyworldofdreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrazyworldofdreams/gifts).



> for the prompt:
> 
> Kihyun is under a curse, which only I.M can save him from but neither of them know

When Kihyun wakes, it’s late afternoon.

His whole body aches against the soft mattress he lies against and his limbs are so disproportionately heavy beneath what feels like downy blankets that he closes his eyes to remember to just  _ breathe _ . 

The air is clean, cleaner than the city and smells like what he thinks baby blue would be if it were a scent. There’s no sound of cars or traffic or crowds, only his breathing and a distant breeze beyond glass. Even the still atmosphere seems to just unravel and curl like green runners from a flower pot, spilling over the edges.

Slowly re-opening his eyes, he watches the golden hour light flirting from the stretch of windows beside his bed and across the unfamiliar white plaster walls. He only get a moment to take in the serenity around him before suddenly and strongly, the memories come crashing back.

The other boys… Hoseok, Hyunwoo, Hyungwon, Jooheon, Minhyuk, and Changkyun… It had been Changkyun’s idea to come to the countryside for spring break. His reason was that they have been working and studying for grad school too hard and that they should go somewhere to unwind and rejuvenate.

Kihyun knows that it’s because they’ve all fallen out of touch and is grateful that the youngest took it upon himself to initiate. Ever since the curse had set in, he’s stopped initiating, starting, beginning anything because he knows that it will inevitably end.

But the week – spending time at the cold beach, hiking, stargazing, eating shitty but cheap packaged food, laughing with all the boys until his sides threatened to split – made him loosen his control for the first time in years. For the first time since he had woken up on his eighteenth birthday cold and alone, Kihyun forgot about his curse.

He remembers again burning lungs from unrestrained laughter and running in an open field. Slowing steps as he looks behind at the top of the steep hill and seeing them all behind and below him, waving. The wild, wild joy in being with the closest thing he could ever remember to having a family and thinking, selfishly,  _ stupidly _ ,

“I wish I could keep all of this forever.”

Last thing he saw was Changkyun there, catching up to him, catching him and yelling something soundless with searching hands as the whole world shatters in a deafening jade  _ crash _ . 

Then it’s pouring out of Kihyun now, anguished shaking cries and quaking tears, down the side of his face into his hair and pillow. Sounds and wetness tumbling all over each other, up to the ceiling, as he fists the blanket by his legs. He’s just choking inside his own head and body with no one there to help him...

He doesn’t hear the bedroom door opening or the sound of someone dropping blankets to the floor until something very solid and warm is against his chest, at his cheeks.

“Hyung! Hyung… sssh, sshh, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here, it’s okay…”

It’s Changkyun and he’s leaning over Kihyun with warm hands wiping away Kihyun’s tears. Immediate shame wells up inside Kihyun now too, to see that the younger seems decades older in this moment, with the deep furrows in his eyebrows and trembling lips.

All on his behalf.

But then something clicks inside of him. Changkyun… Changkyun is here and worried and taking care of him and…

Kihyun tries to prop himself up on his elbows, but Changkyun slides his hand down the slope of his neck to his shoulder. 

“No, lie back,” Changkyun says, trying a smile that would be quiet if not for the pain in his eyes. The touch is tender and not pushing, but also firm enough to ease Kihyun back against the mattress and pillows.

Kihyun lets himself be tucked back in, but he can’t help but croak, his voice heavy with emotion and un-use, “You… you remember?”

There is the slightest shift of expression, right at the edges of Changkyun’s face, but it’s gone so quickly that Kihyun wonders if he had just imagined it.

Kihyun tries again to prop himself up and this time, the younger doesn’t stop him, dropping his gaze, resting a hand against the small of his back and adjusting the pillows.

The whole time Changkyun avoids his gaze until Kihyun finally turns away to stare out at the hallway from the door left open. A cloud passes over the sinking sun and it makes shadows slink and stretch and settle with the lights’ movement.

“What’s wrong, hyung?”

Kihyun doesn’t answer at first. It’s been more than six years that he’s lived with this curse. How many times has he told the truth, to all the people that he has lost over the years? He doesn’t think any. 

When he finally does, he wonders if Changkyun knows or can begin to comprehend what he’s trying to say.

“Once upon a time,” Kihyun says, resting his head back against the wall, “there was once a prince who lived among the gods in heaven.” This story his older brother had told him, not long they had lost their parents, feels now like a broken record. “One day, he accidentally broke a glass treasure and angered the jade emperor.”

Feels like and is a broken record. Overrun and with even less meaning each time he tells it to himself, remembers it, than when he had first heard it. When he was eleven and still didn’t believe in magic. Naive. Untainted by the curse.

“He was then exiled to earth to live a cursed life. His curse: everything he comes to treasure, every person he comes to love would eventually be taken from him. This is so…” His throat tightens at this. 

Even after all of these reruns trapped inside his head, this part never gets easier.

Changkyun’s expression is silent but stormy just below the surface. He almost makes an involuntary movement when he hears the pain in Kihyun’s voice, but makes no sign to stop him.

“This is so that he can truly understand the meaning of  _ loss _ .”

The silence is almost deafening and it stretches itself heavily between them like this breaking of a volcano – its contents spilling forth, dark, ugly, and burning.

He’s afraid to look at Changkyun, of what he’s going to see. Would he understand? Magic is so rare these days that even children don’t believe in it anymore.

Still...

“I’ve been losing important people to me my whole life and I’m tired, Changkyun,” he chokes, unable to stop the stray tear that slips from the corner of his eye. “I’m so  _ tired _ ...”

“Hyung.” The sound is so achingly loving that Kihyun almost doesn’t want to see Changkyun’s expression because it could only be so much more overwhelming.

But he does anyway.

Changkyun’s expression is every bit as tender as his voice, but it’s also…happy. “Hyung,” he repeats, gesturing past him, “look out the window.”

Not quite understanding or believing him, Kihyun follows the trajectory of Changkyun’s gaze. At first he doesn’t see anything except a swollen sun nearing the edge of the horizon, the surrounding sentient trees, the overgrown grass stalks that…

Then he sees it. 

Five silhouettes solidifying from the shadows. Five tall but varifyingly different shapes. Five forms getting closer that are so familiar…

They aren’t looking this way, but they – five people,  _ boys _ – are talking and  _ laughing _ . And to his complete astonishment, Kihyun can’t see any traces of the curse lingering in their wake. The haze of emerald that trails after…

“They don’t remember,” Changkyun says, quiet with a deeply ambivalent smile. “For now, but they might.”

All Kihyun can choke out is a “H-how?”

Changkyun shakes his head and lets out a low laugh. “Why didn’t you tell us about your curse?”

“How could I? I...” He doesn’t finish. Changkyun is understanding, more than understanding. It’s the kind of knowing that only comes from years of experience.

He stands and gathers the blankets he had dropped earlier and carries it to Kihyun’s side and says, “I’ll tell a story too.” 

Everything and anything Kihyun could have even thought to say evaporates. All that he can do is manage a nod. Changkyun smiles and as he folds the blanket carefully, retells the tale with the same primal understanding his eyes speak:

“Once upon a time, a young boy won the god’s favor and was granted one wish. But he could not decide and used his wish to ask for infinite more. To change anything to his every capricious whim… So he was exiled to live his cursed life alone. His curse: to never feel satisfied and that everything he touches becomes… useless, worthless, meaningingless. This is so that…” He hesitates and takes a deep breath before finishing, “he can truly understand the meaning of  _ permeance _ .” 

Another long silence falls in the space, but this time, it’s far more like the downy comforter folded at the edge of his bed.

Changkyun meets his eyes and Kihyun can’t help or explain the shudder that shocks through him.

“I cancel people’s powers,” Changkyun explains. “Magic these days are so rare that I don’t often use it.”

I had a feeling when we first met. We’re rare, but we feel each other. You couldn’t feel me because it’s a lingering effect of my powers but… I knew once you lost your voice…”

Kihyun instantly and vividly remembers this: the coldness of the hardwood floor against his forehead, the stretching of his knees under him, the tightness of his arms wrapped around his chest, the sound of his tears dripping into the floor gaps.

The vocal coach had complimented his improvement in vocal range and even back then, Kihyun  _ still _ hadn’t learned and wanted to keep improving like this…

But then… it had returned. Why hadn’t he noticed then?

Seemingly able to read his mind, Changkyun nods. “I knew instantly it is the effect of a curse and was able to stop it. But also I learned something else then too.” 

Kihyun tilts head to the side in confusion.

A faint warmth is crawling across Changkyun’s nose bridge. “I- I learned that I wanted to take all your pain away – always, curse or not, and forever – cancel it, banish it, or take it into me. Whatever it took, just so that you didn’t have to feel it anymore.”

Overwhelmed at all of this, Kihyun lets out a quiet sound between a gasp and a sob.

Changkyun must have misinterpreted it as his eyes widen in horror and start s to fumble, “I-I can’t break it, either of our curses, but… at least I can stop it.” His eyebrow furrow together, so earnest and wanting. “We can figure something out. We can figure out a way to get their memories back…” He ducks his head and his words are distressed and upset. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry about the others, I knew but I couldn’t stop it, I should’ve known, I should’ve-”

He stops as Kihyun rests a hand against his cheek, the older’s eyes so anciently warm and tender that Changkyun seems to forget to breathe. 

“What are you saying?” Kihyun whispers, smiling and shaking his head slightly, but not breaking contact. “You did wonderfully.” 

Changkyun seems to be at a complete loss at words, just staring at Kihyun almost like he’s seeing him –  _ really  _ seeing him – for the first time.

The moment passes by in a whisper and then Kihyun is pulling back and saying, “We’ll just have to make new memories from now-” when something shifts in Changkyun’s gaze on his face that makes him pause.

Watching him so carefully, Changkyun reaches over to cup Kihyun’s cheek, something in his eyes so strong yet so vulnerable. Then he’s leaning over across the blankets, slowly like he’s hesitant or shy, like he’s just savoring it all, like Kihyun can move away at any time if he wants to. When he realizes that Kihyun isn’t moving away or making any motion to do so, he lets his eyes flutter close and presses a fragile kiss to his lips.

As soon as their lips touch, every ancient doubt and painfully familiar panic floods up cold, heavy, and dark inside Kihyun’s chest and throat. Every fragment of overwhelming fear of losing something so precious to him like has been over and over again, and the instinctive retreat back inside himself to protect himself, to minimize the inevitable pain that will surely come… 

The pain… that never comes.

Changkyun is tilting his chin to deepen the touch when Kihyun feels something break. 

It’s not the curse or them, but something deeply primal and unfamiliar, but something so soothing yet intensely cathartic like releasing a breath that he didn’t realize that he’s been holding. For maybe his whole life. 

_ This is so that he can truly understand the meaning of loss _ …

A memory (or was it a vision) flashes through his mind. Warm arms around his shoulders, an adoring tightness in their close bodies, and in a deeply familiar voice that’s both his brother’s and Changkyun’s saying, 

“ _Maybe we’ve just forgotten, that maybe it was really a blessing, not a curse. Maybe it’s to remind us to what what is truly worth having, and what to fight for._ ”

This realization makes an ancient vibration hum through the spaces in his ribcage and this feeling of cleaning is something so quickly addicting that Kihyun is finally,  _ finally  _ letting go.

Then he’s back, opening his mouth and kissing Changkyun back as if it had been his idea all along and there is a low replying rumble, not at all dissatisfied, in the younger’s broad chest as Kihyun crawls forward to straddle his lap.

Changkyun’s embrace and touches are both so wildly new and profoundly intimate that Kihyun feels so safe, feeling his thumbs press into the soft give of Kihyun’s waist and affection smoothing every broken edge. 

Soon they are spellbound, losing themselves in tender desperation, learning the meaning of trust and love in every flutter of daydreaming breaths and fragile promise of better tomorrows.

 

(Kihyun thinks that, even though so many pages have been lost in their story, there are so many more books they can write. Stories, memories, everything.

Because he’s not alone anymore, and never will be. He may lose other things, but never this. Neither will ever be lonely again.

Not when the world, them, the rest of their lives, all this, and so, so much more, is  _ theirs _ .)

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> title: "every blessing ignored becomes a curse" ~ paulo coelho  
> also inspired by: "better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness."
> 
> Thank you so much for the prompt idea, I wrote and rewrote like 7 different ideas, but this was the only one I was satisfied with. I hope this was at least up to what you imagined soBS
> 
> And thank you so much for the wonderful mods for hosting this and understanding that this is my first monsta x fic so if it's wildly OOC I'm so sorryy. hope you enjoyed!!


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